We have been meaning to write brief reviews of a few gems in our neighborhood, and instead we return as diners during our short breaks from work and school, and we grow somewhat lazy. But they are coming, we promise, soon!

In the meantime, it is Monday evening, which for a student signifies little when every day is geared towards obsessing about a thesis. And so I do what feels most natural: bake granola after dinner. It was one of those nights where I set out to cook polenta lasagna but because this is my first time with polenta, it was chunky and then watery, and the entire dish turned into a soupy tomato melted mozzarella catastrophe. It didn’t taste awful, but as I spooned the marshy polenta tomato lasagna, Monday began to feel like the first day of an endless week. To remedy this affair I turned to a recipe I couldn’t fail, and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter, since my roommate and I have a gargantuan supply of nuts, grains and seeds. She arrived last August with a cardboard box, heavy as an elephant, filled with nuts, bought in bulk out in the Philadelphia suburbs. We’ve been eating our way through them.

I scooped three cups of rolled oats, one and a half cups of nuts/seeds (sunflower, walnuts, pecans), I threw in a quarter cup of milled golden flaxseed, and stirred it all in a large nonstick pan. For ten minutes, I cooked the oats and nuts over a low-flame, stirring frequently, until they smelled fragrant. Meanwhile I preheated the oven to 325 F, and in a small saucepan warmed two tablespoons of brown sugar and just under one third cup of maple syrup. I doused my oats and nuts with the sweet sauce, stirred until well combined, and added two pinches of fleur de sel salt. And a third after a pause. I transferred the unbaked granola onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, and baked for twenty-minutes, stirring every five minutes. Then I let my granola cool, after turning the hot oats like fresh tilled earth with a wooden spoon and adding a half cup of currants.